If there’s no hell, God can’t be trusted because he doesn’t keep his word and therefore doesn’t do justice, and if there’s no justice, mercy has no meaning.

If you don’t understand what I just typed: “if there’s no justice, mercy has no meaning,” keep thinking about it. Look the words “justice” and “mercy” up in a dictionary (click them and read the definitions on dictionary.com).

12 responses to “Would Rob Bell Rob God of Glory?”

Just to play devil’s advocate, I believe people like Mr. Bell would respond by saying that everything you’ve said is dependent upon a particular kind of hermeneutic. If you read the Bible this way (they would say), then these conclusions become unavoidable. If you don’t, then they’re not.

I think this response requires the examination of two other ideas. The first is the continual language of God executing vengeance upon his enemies throughout the entire Bible. Quite simply put, there is no responsible way to read the Bible that ignores this fact of the texts. Rejecting Hamilton’s explanation of why hell glorifies God does nothing to address the reality of God’s judgment throughout all of Scripture. The second thing we must examine what the Bible describes God as being, doing, and accomplishing. The title of Bell’s book, Love Wins is already reductionistic, in that it interprets the afterlife through a single aspect of God’s character, subordinating and/or eliminating all of the other things going on in the Bible.

Ya know, I think most people (and many Christians) would regard that as a counter-intuitive observation.

My guess is that the natural man’s intuition about Hell is that the existence of Hell or the necessity of God creating Hell highlights or showcases God’s ineffectual love and/or power because there are souls in Hell.

Why doesn’t the OT tell us whether Adam went to either heaven or hell
when he died? Why is Hell not discussed as an idea in the Torah? Why is
the idea of “original sin” not really spelled out in the OT? Why is YHWH
depicted with very similar characteristics to other gods of the
region/time (Egyptian, Canannite, Mesopotamian, etc), i.e. quick to
anger, manifested in storms and physical catalysms, violent,
manipulative, etc.?

I ask not to be controversial but because many Christians are grappling
with these questions as they dig deeper into the Hebrew scriptures.

The longer I live the more I have come to believe that all of humanity is damaged and deficient. Even in our limited, deficient human justice we set different standards for those in society who are mentally handicapped or too immature to understand all the intricate aspects of coexisting in a complex society. God, who is above all in insight and compassion, would surely do no less with his creation.

Do babies who die without professing Christ as their savior go to eternal punishment?